Canadians have been affected by fraudulent attacks more than 30,000 times in the past year. With cybercriminals working constantly to attack your data, keeping your business’s security top of mind in 2022 needs to be a priority. And good news—it's not too late to start protecting your business and SaskTel is here to help. Here are 5 tips to keep your business’s IT infrastructure safe this year. And for more help, talk to our experts about a SaskTel IT Health Check.

Use strong passwords and multi-factor authentication.
This may seem obvious, but strong passwords are necessary for cybersecurity. Encourage all your employees to use passwords that are more like ‘jsJEpf48n!o0)n’ and less like ‘abcd1234’ and ensure they only use a password once. They also shouldn’t write their password down where it could potentially be stolen, such as a notebook that is kept on their desks. Instead, have them store their passwords in a secure password manager such as 1Password or LastPass.

Whenever possible, enforce multi-factor authentication with your employees’ accounts, and have them use their cellphones as a backup. That way, if their password is stolen, a hacker would also require their cellphone and PIN in order to gain access to the account.

Create a secure perimeter. Use a firewall.
A firewall acts as a security system for your network connections. Essentially, it acts as a barrier between internal networks and systems, and external ones, like the Internet. Enabling a firewall to block any unwanted access to your network is essential for data security. Smart Network Firewall is the first layer of defense to protect the data on your network by preventing cyber-attacks and malicious activity. If you have employees who work remotely, ensure they also have firewalls set up on their home networks.

Do you have antivirus malware protection? Antivirus software helps protect your computer against most viruses. These viruses can access your personal data, delete your files, and even attack other computers from yours. It's still just as important in 2024 to protect your computer against malware.

You should also monitor the devices on your LAN to make sure nothing is on the network that shouldn't be. Having someone at your business to watch out for all the devices on your network is an important task in cybersecurity.

Create a human firewall—teach your employees the importance of security.
Human error is one of the biggest risks to your business. A business is only as strong as its weakest link, so ensure that you’re providing all of your employees with the necessary information and training needed for them to make good decisions concerning cybersecurity.

Security Awareness Training services from SaskTel can help improve your team’s security awareness through informative education. The Security eLearning course can provide your staff with crucial information that is timely and effective for addressing security issues. The course has been developed by our Security Awareness training partner, SecuSolutions, and their team of security experts. SaskTel Security Phishing Simulation also offers real world covert phishing attacks against individuals or groups in both small and large businesses. Areas of weakness can then be addressed through education and training.

Know the state of your IT environment.
Is it safe, or is it at risk? If you need expert advice on how and where to improve your network security, a SaskTel IT Health Check consultant can come to your business to assess your security policies and practices and provide improvement recommendations. In turn, you can use these recommendations to assess where your current system is leaving you vulnerable and identify gaps in your IT infrastructure.

If you need more in-depth analysis and have a large or more complicated IT environment, a Strategic Security Assessment from SaskTel offers a comprehensive risk analysis report about exploits and possible threats to which your IT policies, procedures, networks, and systems are vulnerable. These exploits and threats are ranked according to their risk levels along with detailed information describing how they work. You will have the information you need to understand the risk vs investment of implementing safeguards to achieve maximum protection of your IT environment.

Have a plan in place when disaster strikes: backup to the cloud regularly.
To save your business from disaster, you need a reliable backup solution that will get your business back up and running in no-time. SaskTel Cloud Backup protects your business from hardware defects, lost or stolen devices, employee error, natural disasters, and cybersecurity threats like ransomware or cyberattacks. Backup your servers and end-user devices like laptops, desktops, and databases/applications. Easily and quickly backup and restore your data.

Backup jobs are automated and executed every day. You can access an online self-serve portal available anytime, from anywhere. Your data is safe and secure in our world-class Data Centres in Regina and Saskatoon that guarantees a 99.9% uptime so your data is available when you need it.

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to IT security at your business, and SaskTel Business Solutions can help. Visit our website for a full list of products and solutions.

Revised Blog with updates from December 2023